Each time I log onto the BT.com forum, I look for the yellow colored icons which indicate that there are new posts that I have not read yet. It seems like every day there are one or more posts from new members; sometimes the subject line is not very revealing, but even when I realize that it's probably spam, I still click on it just so that I can clear the 'yellow' icon.

Since Jeff, Lathe, or the moderator undoubtedly eventually look at those posts, because they are always quickly removed, I'm wondering why they aren't looked at -- at least for new users -- BEFORE they are posted. I own and moderate (along with one volunteer) a Yahoo Group; all new members are automatically placed on 'moderated' status so that their initial posts can be checked BEFORE posting. If it is clear that they are posting a message pertaining to brewing equipment (which clearly will defeat any 'bots'), then they are removed from moderated status and their post is sent. That method works very well, and doesn't subject our members (now well over 500) to spam.

Since you are obviously going to look at the post anyway, why not look at it BEFORE it is posted instead of afterwards? Spam is getting through DAILY -- ofter more than once -- and it is very annoying. Every time it happens, I need a quick homebrew to calm myself, and I'm turning into an alcoholic. I'm just kidding about that, of course. Just my two cents.

Chief wrote:As for you or anyone else going into MY group and editing any messages, that would be impossible -- unless you somehow managed to 'hack' Yahoo Groups. The only ones who can edit any messages there are myself and ONE other person who I've made a moderator. Neither one of us goes in and arbitrarily changes messages, or changes the meaning of the original, and I trust that it's the same way here.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

No I was talking about if you made everyone Mods...sorry I was just trying to follow along myself.....sorry.

Chief wrote:No I was talking about if you made everyone Mods...sorry I was just trying to follow along myself.....sorry.

No need to apologize. You merely misread the word 'moderated' as 'moderators', and if that's what I had said, you would have been correct in your post. Just a matter of you needing better eyesight, or more sleep, or less homebrew.

My point is that new members might have to wait a day, maybe even two, to have their first message or two approved before posting, but that's just part of being a new member; call it 'initiation'. Then when a moderator gets around to reading the message -- as they obviously do anyway -- then they approve the message and change the status to unmoderated. When the message is obviously spam, it is deleted by the moderator, which saves several hundred other people from having to open it and then delete it. I don't think bots are capable of faking an on-topic message about brewing, or in my case, brewing equipment, so the system works extremely well. The only way that spam can get through on my board is if a bona fide brewer joins, makes an on-topic post, and then posts spam -- perhaps someone who owns an on-line brew shop trying to promote their business. In that case, I edit or delete the message, send a warning explaining our policy and my action, and perhaps put them back on moderated status, depending upon how they have contributed to the group and how eggregious their spam was (sometimes they just forget or don't really mean to spam). But the sort of spam that I'm complaining about is the blatant sex, drugs, investments, 'get a college diploma in two weeks' type of junk.

Should you be interested another method of slowing spam is to use a captcha. I've seen this coming up more and more. If you're unfamilar with what captcha is it's that funny looking graphic of letters and numbers that you have to decipher and then type out correctly. This pretty much stops the bots and the majority of the spammers are too lazy to take that much time. I've implemented on my work Web site email forms and removed all direct email addresses. My daughter's eBusiness uses it to join the forum they have. It seems to be working so far.

The only issue I can think of right off with using captcha is with the sight impaired. Some use colors and some aren't real clear so that may be an issue for color blindness and/or degrees of visual impairity.

Bob wrote:Should you be interested another method of slowing spam is to use a captcha. I've seen this coming up more and more. If you're unfamilar with what captcha is it's that funny looking graphic of letters and numbers that you have to decipher and then type out correctly. This pretty much stops the bots and the majority of the spammers are too lazy to take that much time. I've implemented on my work Web site email forms and removed all direct email addresses. My daughter's eBusiness uses it to join the forum they have. It seems to be working so far.

The only issue I can think of right off with using captcha is with the sight impaired. Some use colors and some aren't real clear so that may be an issue for color blindness and/or degrees of visual impairity.

Bob O.

I believe this is already implemented here. I'm pretty sure I had to do it.

Until your post, I never knew what they were called but I have encountered captchas many times. Another method of weeding out bots is to ask a question for applicants to answer; on my group, I just ask: 'Why do you want to join?', and I'm not sure that bots are programmed to respond in a manner that would be universally accepted by the wide range of forums they try to spam. If that doesn't work, you could ask a simple on-topic question -- like what is a carboy -- but that would be a problem for people who have never brewed and don't know but are interested in finding out about our craft.. On the other hand, how many would that be? Seems like there are a couple of solutions to at least help improve the problem, so I hope that something will be done.

There's a phpBB module called Anti-Spam ACP that is worth a look. I have used that on a forum along with a mod called Anti Bot Question Mod; these cleared my problems. The second one allows you to use custom questions similar to what was suggested above.